[.ca] Love's Labour's Lost (Widescreen)

From Amazon.com:
Having taken Shakespeare at his word on Hamlet (i.e., not cutting a single syllable out of a very long play), Kenneth Branagh selects a more radical approach with Love's Labour's Lost. Here the prolific director-star weeds out much of the play's dialogue and adds songs and dances of a decidedly modern bent. The King of Navarre (Alessandro Nivola, Nicolas Cage's wacko brother in Face/Off) and his three comrades (Branagh, Matthew Lillard, Adrian Lester) take a vow: no womanly distractions while they pursue their studies. Ah, but at that very moment, floating down a magical studio-built river, is the queen of France (Alicia Silverstone), accompanied by three ladies-in-waiting. You do the math. Branagh has set the tale on the eve of the Second World War, which allows for the inclusion of vintage pop songs, including "Cheek to Cheek," "The Way You Look Tonight," and a rousing chorus of "There's No Business Like Show Business," led by--who else?--Nathan Lane. The fact that most of the cast members are not accomplished song-and-dance folk is clearly meant to charm, but the results are spotty at best. Perhaps the most dynamic performer is Natascha McElhone (memorable from Ronin), whose aristocratic bearing and bottomless eyes lend a gravity to the material that is otherwise absent from Branagh's twinkly staging. The play contains some of Shakespeare's loveliest paeans to the language of love, yet Branagh seems to be in a hurry to juice everything up lest the audience lose interest. The labor shows. --Robert Horton

Why not?:
I'm being generous with four stars, but Amazon won't let you rate with halves and I couldn't bear to give this delightful little bit of fluff three or less. Let's take the elements here: 1)Shakespeare - YAY! Love 'im, he's great, and I don't much care how much is taken away in terms of volume of lines as long as the actors can put the necessary omph behind them. 2) 30s hits - HOOO BABY, yay! Cole Porter, Gerswhin, delightful music. Can't really go wrong. 3) Kenneth Branagh -- good. He likes to go over the top, push the envelope, whatever cliche you want to use to say that he is a daring filmmaker, and that sort of daring is necessary both for musicals and for Shaekspeare productions. Sure, he oversteps every now and then, but it doesn't detract from all that he gets right. Stupid things like having the Don kick his lackey in the crotch are easily overlooked in light of the hilarious fun Branagh ocassionaly has with adapting a modern setting to the original text. Do you actually need to know the plot? Nope, not really, it's doesn't matter much. The film is a vehicle to get four attractive men paired up with four attractive women and have a lot of rollicking good times, singing and dancing in between. In short, though, the king of Nevarre and his three chums have agreed to devote themselves to study for the next three years, forgoing food, drink, sleep, and women. Then -whoops!- four women, headed by the princess of France, drop into town. Shakespeare's comedies actually are comparable to musicals -- there's a lot of beautiful verse, people fall in love at first sight, and reality is chucked right out the window, thank you very much. One of my favorite bits was when the four goofy lovers all come into the library one by one to confess their love, seemingly to no one, and each man is overheard and found out. Dumaine is called out by Longaville, and the King jumps out of his hiding place to chastise them both. In the original text, Nevarre is hidden in a bush, but in the movie he hides in plain view, holding a potted plant in front of his face. His line, "I was shrouded in this bush," while holding aloft the little plant makes me laugh like the idiot I am. I didn't really mind that the actors aren't phenomenal talents; they're clearly having fun. Alessandro Nivola as the King was a surprise for me; I'm generally dubious about most American's abilities with Shakespeare, but he was very capable and easily understood (that's really the mark of whether or not a person is good at Shakespeare. If you, without reading the text, can follow what a character is saying, then they're doing it right). He has a solid singing voice and is just plain fun to watch. Branagh is a good singer, a fair dancer, and his Shakespeare will always be phenomenal. Adrian Lester is FAN-damn-TASTIC, and Matthew Lillard kind of sucks, but he fortunately has a very small part. The four boys, in general, are extremely entertaining. For the women; I can hardly abide Alicia Silverstone in this role. Her singing voice is very thin (the girls' "Fancy Free" just isn't that good. Silverstone's solo baffled me. I was like, "What are you trying to do? Be British? Sing? Cause you're not really doing either."), her dancing is probably the weakest of the women's, and her Shakespeare is wretched. She doesn't speak it like she gets it, more like she's trying to put emphasis on every single stupid word. The Princess, instead of being a wit, is just kind of annoying. Natasha McElhone is fantastic as Rosaline; she gives her character dignity where Silverstone's is a flighty teen. The other two girls are really interchangeable and neither have significant solos. All in all, it was a very entertaining film. As a whole, it's a good time, even though it isn't first rate Shakespeare or musical. Whee!

the sublime and the ridiculous:
Beautiful words, delightful music, great acting! What could ruin such a mix. The answer, the ego of Kenneth Branagh. He is much too old for the part of a young student. His direction is absurdly literal. For example: probably the best use of the song "Heaven, I'm in heaven..." is sung by Angel Islington in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. Here the song is ruined by literally yanking the singers up on wires to a ceiling painted to resemble heaven. If a song mentions a hat, the director shows us a hat, and so on. The camera is always doing things that are distracting and annoying. The choreography is nothing but a string of literal quotes, from Busby Berkley to Fred Astaire to Gene Kelly to Bob Fosse. It never flows, just jerks from quote to quote. And while the older actors are superb, there does not seem to be an actor under 25 who can do Shakespeare...they all sound as if they are mouthing words that are not a part of their vocabulary. And the slapstick -- 'taint funny Magee. After all this, I still recommend watching the film. It is much kinder to the clowns than most productions of LLL. Branagh's great speech in praise of love is worth the price of admission. He acts sincerity so well it is almost enough to make us forget what he did to Emma Thompson. And the music is ... heaven.

Their Labors were Lost alright!:
I love Shakespeares works, he knows the human soul better than any writter I can think of, I have studied his plays for the last 5 years. I also love musicals, I love West Side Story, and I thought it was a perfect trasnfer of Romeo and Juliet to modern times, infact I have a book that compares the two scripts, and they are almost exactly the same, page for page, just with differant wording and one script has songs. So naturaly when I saw LLL in the video store I was thrilled! I took it home and turned it on. Now I do not know any polite way to say this so I had best get started. None of the singers in the film are any good at all, the ones you can understand are tone deaf, while you cannot understand what the on-tune characters are singing about. I wonder if they had auditions for this film, or if they just picked the first 12 people who walked in the door, I would guess the latter. Nathan Lane is completely out of his natural environment. The set? Oh Delilah!, I would rather have them film this movie from the inside of a cardboard box!!! None of the songs fit together at all, they slaughter every song that they use in this film on the spott. The choreography? I have studied the all famed Bob Fosse for the last 3 years, among other musical theater choreographers, most of which are amazing! I know that the actors in this show are not big dancers, but this is pathetic. The boldest dancing they have in this movie is where everyone comes out in masks, they all frisk each other, and then they lay down on top of each other and roll their heads around as if they were a drunken 0r-9y, they do this for 10 mins. How can anyone call this art? They ruin any drama that this play contains, any true human emotion, they ruin the ending, Shakespeare would have hated this! So would Lennard Bernstien. The one good thing about this film is some of the costuming is cute, although its cheaply done, and one of Branagh's monologues is wonderful. Other than that the film is a complete waste of intellagent life. I would have given this negative 5 stars, but Amazon does not have that option. If you still feel that you want see this, please, rent it first, this is not entertainment for people who have the compacity to think. As to one of the other reviews, somebody said that Shakespeare did not write musicals, this is entirely not true, Shakepseare founded a great deal of musicals, if you are ever at the Shakespeare library in Washington DC, you can learn more about the music they found for most of his works. If you would like to see one of Shakespeares musicals I suggest you rent Twelvth Night "Or what you will" its a good example of a Shakespearian musical.

Shakespeare that is not to be taken seriously:
Love's Labour's Lost is one of the rare Shakespearean films in which the viewer does not have to be a scholar to enjoy; it belongs in that category of movies which, like wine coolers, are sweet and a little intoxicating but not much else. The inclusion of details from old Hollywood musicals (including the clever placement of Fred Astaire's necktie-as-a-belt statement in the costuming) make it interesting to film buffs, and the giddy song and dance numbers make it pure cinematic confection. For once, Shakespeare's comedy is presented in a way that is actually hilarious. The sugar rush can become overwhelming, however, especially at the end of the film, when events turn suddenly tragic and the feel-good tone receives rather desperate attempts to be maintained. Still, this version of Shakespeare is refreshing, especially after so many tragedies have already received film treatment. If anything, Love's Labour's Lost proves that interracial romance can exist in a movie without garning special attention, which is probably the most refreshing idea of all.

Branaugh Sucks:
Branaugh is too old to play Berowne, Silverstone too poor an actress for the Princess, and Nathan Lane's Costard is not a large enough part to make this movie any better.